


A Work In Progress

by Sk3tch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Bit of swearing but not much, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce Banner-centric, Fluff, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Intrusive Thoughts, Pre-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Science Bros, Stanner if you squint, Tony Is a Good Bro, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 03:43:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13158552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sk3tch/pseuds/Sk3tch
Summary: Bruce knows the voice in his head can lie sometimes, and he's gotten pretty good at just ignoring it. But sometimes intrusive thoughts can creep in and blindside you. How does Bruce deal with those?





	A Work In Progress

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya! Like the tags said, this is angsty but with a nice fluffy ending. Please do not read if mentions of past suicide attempts or child abuse will put you in a bad spot! 
> 
> Special shout out to Spencesttar for betaing this mess, and for their endless amount of reassurances when self doubt was quite heavy in the midnight hours. They absolutely rock!! AND! Also write fic! If Clint Barton is your fave, Spencesttar has you covered. [He Never Missed](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4679639/chapters/10681385) is absolutely amazing and deserves ALL of the accolades. :)
> 
> Alright, that'e enough from me... enjoy, and thanks for reading!

                It was rarely anything dramatic that brought on these moods, Bruce contemplated.

                They just happened.

                Or, perhaps it was more apt to say nothing specifically dramatic happened, because when you’re living with the Avengers there is a certain level of drama and stress you come to expect. Like Steve stumbling onto the weird part of the internet and calling a team meeting to discuss what he’d seen with everyone. Or Thor literally eating a whole kitchen worth of food right before Stark Industries’ annual  community banquet where he was a guest judge for the pie baking contest…

Then again, the time Clint somehow managed to replace all of Natasha’s typical black with neon pink clothing was quite hard to forget… the act _and_ the fallout.

                Tony, of course, was always a random variable. Perhaps the most unpredictable of the whole bunch. One moment he would be calmly working on suit upgrades, and the next, he’d turn that crazy, half-mad smirk to Bruce and suddenly three floors are missing and Bruce is waking up naked, again. He’s since learned not to trust Tony if he hears the words “what if I just…”

                Tony Stark and the other Avenger’s antics aside, Bruce could definitively say nothing over the top dramatic or emotional had happened since the Chitauri attack. Well, nothing aside from Agent Coulson coming back from the dead. But the angriest person in the room hadn’t even been him. It had been pretty evenly tied between Tony and Clint.

                But that had been months ago, and honestly, Bruce hadn’t been that shocked by the reveal. He understood the reasoning behind making sacrifices for the greater good, even if the solution meant you might have to suffer longer than those around you. If it meant the ones you care about got to be safe, what was a little self-imposed exile? . Tony, on the other hand, hadn’t entirely forgiven Agent Coulson; but he was speaking to him again, albeit with heavy sarcasm, so Bruce thought that was at least a start. However, none of that was relevant to what was happening to Bruce right now.

                Right now, he and Tony were in one of their shared labs. Not only was it bigger with more space to spread their individual work out, it also happened to be both Tony and Bruce’s  favorite since it was right in the middle of  the Avenger sanctioned floors, making it easy for them to  go up or down and be right where they were needed, should they be needed., Tony was working on something suit-related and Bruce had been trying to get through a particularly dry research paper.

                The study was promising in regards to radiation and immunity to diseases, but the added commentary was unnecessary. It was one thing to analyze another colleague’s work, and another to outright call them an imbecile.  Usually something this important to him wouldn’t be so dull and he could ignore the passive aggressive undertone, but today he couldn’t.  His mind kept wandering, and he couldn’t focus on the information. The last time he read an article this bad, he’d had Tony read some of it and then commiserated with bad science puns and memes. Which incidentally lead to a ‘Y’all Need Science’ tee shirt hanging in Bruce’s closet the next day. His smile at the memory was short lived when his brain brought up the stupid notion that if the Avengers were an immune system, Bruce would be a pathogen.

                Immediately, he felt any happiness and comfort leave him, a frown deepening on his face. He tried as soon as it entered his head to shake it out, but he could feel it lurking at the very edge of his mind, much like the Hulk’s presence . For something so silly, it felt like a punch to the gut. The thought caught him off guard, to be frank.

                He had been having a good day.

                Glancing over the Stark tablet he was attempting to read from, he saw Tony was waist deep in holograms and knee deep in real world scrap pieces. The perfect representation of his friend’s scattered mind. With him multitasking like this, Bruce figured now was as good a time to sneak out and have a semi-meltdown as any.  The other man was so engrossed in his work, Bruce wasn’t surprised when Tony didn’t notice him get up from his lab table. Just in case he needed an excuse for why he was leaving,  Bruce picked up his half-filled cup of tea . As stealthy as Bruce was being, he had hoped Tony wouldn’t notice him leaving, but as soon as Bruce got to the door, the mad genius did. Tony looked him in the eyes, glanced down to Bruce’s mug, and back to Bruce’s tired face.

                “Getting a refill?”

                “Uhmm, yeah.” Bruce scratched the nape of his neck and saw Tony’s eyes narrow slightly. “The Jasmine isn’t doing it, and I left the blueberry blend upstairs, so..”

                 After a beat, Tony nodded, seeming to accept Bruce’s excuse. “I don’t know how I haven’t converted you to run purely on coffee yet, Doc. It’d be a helluva lot easier considering I have the stuff stashed everywhere.”

                 Bruce laughed nervously. “Yeah, well, you keep trying Stark. Maybe one of these days you’ll break me.”  

                 Immediately Tony grimaced, then shrugged it off. Had Bruce not worked with Tony in the labs and learned some of his little quirks, Bruce would have missed it completely. Concern. Tony was concerned, but didn’t want to push him.

                 It made Bruce feel even worse.

                “Anywho, tea won’t brew itself. So…” Bruce tilted his head in the direction of the elevator and Tony put his hands up as if to say ‘fine, you win for now’.

                “Don’t take too long, eh, Bruce?”

                 Bruce nodded, but kept his eyes glued to the mug in his hand until the doors closed and he didn’t have to meet that intense stare Tony always had when he tried to figure out the source of a problem. Bruce already knew the source, and he didn’t need Tony to read the answer in his eyes.

                In the elevator, he pushed his glasses up and pinched his nose. Sighing a long second as the button panel asked again how it could best serve the occupant, Bruce reached out a calm finger to press one of the lit circles. For the briefest of seconds Bruce pondered if he should actually go to the kitchen and make some tea, but the idea was laughable. If tea could’ve made anything about Bruce better, it sure took its time in doing so, as he had yet to see a difference.

 

                So, Bruce didn’t go up three floors to the communal kitchen; he didn’t even go to the communal floor. Instead he calmly got off two floors down, the doors opening to reveal  the smaller of the tower’s two gyms. Bruce sipped his cool drink mindlessly as his feet led him past the track, the sparring dummies, and the climbing ropes. None of those were  for him, though. Perhaps a yoga mat, kept in the corner out of the way of everyone else’s stuff, but that was all. The room he ‘worked out’ in had less in the way of obstacles for practice and more barricades for restraint.

                Bruce smirked to himself. Right, a ‘workout room’. That’s what Tony had labeled it on the blueprints, and he’d gone along with it for the sake of the billionaire’s ego. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t been the one to beg Tony to make sure there was a place Bruce could go when he would inevitably lose control or needed space from others. Tony had to be persuaded multiple times, but he had done it. For Bruce, it almost seemed he would do anything, and that kind of terrified the physicist. And if it helped to call it a workout room, so be it. Workout room, cage, the names were interchangeable. To Bruce it didn’t matter what it was called, so long as it kept him from hurting anyone. And it would.

                Of course, referring to it as a room was definitely  an understatement since it took up about a quarter of the floor, was reinforced with vibranium, and was probably equal to his ridiculously-sized living quarters, but with fewer valuables, according to Tony. It was, after all, for his counterpart. The likes of  which were decidedly less delicate than Bruce.

                That being said, there was still a fair amount of technology in the large space. Tony argued that Bruce spent time in here as well as the Hulk, and that meant things for Bruce in case he needed some definitive alone time. It was silly really. If Bruce came into this room, it was usually only for one purpose: to lose control.

 

                Once he got to the end of the large hallway, he set his mug on the small end table along with his watch. He toed out of his shoes and set them underneath, adding his shirt and pants on top. The tablet, wedged under an arm forgotten, he put with his glasses on the table. Once all of his belongings were neatly stacked for the time being, Bruce shuffled over to the door and keyed in his access code. The door opened and he took a step inside .

                He was hardly inside the room five seconds before the airlocks secured into place. He sighed as Jarvis welcomed him, and pinched the bridge of his nose to keep from saying something sarcastic about Tony’s sometimes twisted sense of hospitality. A drawer slid out from the wall next to the door and Bruce took the spare pair of glasses and sweatpants it held for him before it slid seamlessly back into the wall.

                If Bruce hadn’t spent so long learning how to meditate, the stillness and  quiet of the room would have set him more on edge. As it was, most days he found it comforting, a nice break from the hustle and bustle of the tower.

                Don’t get him wrong, it still felt suffocating every time he went in; like he was stuck inside his own head and not in the green room hiding from everyone for their protection, but there was a strange comfort there as well. Like the calm before the storm.

                “Jarvis?” he asked, “Could you bring up video of any Avengers in the Tower?”

                There was a smooth ‘certainly Dr. Banner’ and soon multiple video feeds were playing on the wall in front of him. Tony, going by the feed, had given up on the holograms from before and was now drafting something at a workbench. Bruce smiled to himself as the engineer finished his coffee and apparently grumbling to himself about how far away the coffee pot was before heading over to grab another cup. Bruce watched him pull out his phone and type on it before pocketing the device and taking another drag from his caffeine vice.

                Bruce’s gaze flicked next to Steve who was drawing the New York skyline from the roof. Bruce was happy to see the man out of his time enjoying one of his obvious passions. It was nice.

                Bruce supposed he should hate Steve, and want him to suffer in his confusing time-lapse. He was, the ever present mockery of perfected gamma/serum research Bruce had strived to replicate in his project on radiation resistance… sadly, Ross had lied about the radiation resistance part, and Bruce had fully believed in his and Betty’s work enough to foolishly test it on himself. Needless to say, the resulting Hulk was no Captain America.

                But even if he had any hate left in him for the perfect soldier, he couldn’t hate Steve. He was genuine and nice, and he knew a thing or two about rough childhoods. They were pretty similar, all things considered. They both enjoyed nature, helping people, and trying to keep Tony Stark from making an ass of himself in the public eye. Because they were so similar, sometimes Bruce wondered if one day he could  become as good as Steve was. The conclusion he always came to, however, was a resounding no.

                For everything they had in common, Bruce could never be as good as Steve, the deciding factor too big of a difference. The difference being Bruce had a rage in him capable of producing a mindless smashing machine, while Steve had a heart of pure gold. That wasn’t Steve’s fault, though. The only person Bruce could blame for his temperament was himself.

                Natasha must have still been away on a mission, and Bruce knew Thor was visiting Dr. Foster in New Mexico for the week, so just Clint could be seen on the remaining screen. The hawk was cleaning his bow in the archery range Tony built. Bruce recognized the bow in hand was Clint’s favorite. Clint hadn’t used it on any missions since the Chitauri attack, when he had unwillingly used it to take out the engine on the helicarrier under Loki’s suggestions. Bruce didn’t think Clint had even touched it for a month following the return of the cube. He knew Clint still carried a lot of guilt for many of the deaths Loki caused throughout the ordeal, and really, he understood why. When the Hulk took over…

                But this was good, Clint using his favorite set again. Even if it was just for target practice at the tower. As of late, he’d been making do with a replacement spare from SHIELD, but constantly griping about it not feeling the same. Natasha once told Bruce the bow Clint was currently using was Clint’s first bow from SHIELD, which explained the wear and tear and why he seemed to be extra protective of  it. He refused all of  Tony’s offers to build him a new bigger and better bow, insisting his old bow was just a few tune-ups away from being his go-to again. .

                ‘Something shiny and sassy to match your attitude, not that scrap of junk,’ he vaguely recalled Tony insisting to the reluctant, non-superpowered or otherworldly member of their team. The resulting argument could be heard two floors in either direction. Valuing what you’ve got this, keeping up with the times that. It had come to a head with a particularly threatening suggestion about silver spoons and where they ought to be shoved.

                 Thank goodness Natasha was there to intervene when Tony seemed to pull a spoon out of thin air and told Clint to try. At the moment, Bruce thought Clint just might be mad enough to prove it wasn’t an idle threat. Natasha told them both to stop being children, in not so delicate terms, and the two separated, storming off to brood in opposite locations.

                 Bruce thought the resulting week long sulk was ridiculous on both sides. Maybe it was the constant glaring, or Tony mumbling under his breath for the duration that made Bruce sigh and finally say something.

                “Tony,” he’d said to the man muttering over a few prototype arrows Clint had again refused to come look at, “pushing isn’t going to make it happen.”

                 Tony stopped mumbling and looked over at Bruce instead.

                “Or maybe it will. Sometimes people need pushing, Bruce, I mean, look at you!”

                “I wasn’t going to take you up on your offer.”

                “But you did! And you’re still here, _because_ I pushed you to.” Tony crossed his arms, thinking that point settled everything.

                 Bruce set his pencil down and frowned.

                “Just because I’m still here doesn’t mean I’m completely comfortable about it. I’m trying Tony. It’s- try to put yourself in our positions, trust doesn’t come easy to people like Clint and I.” Tony scoffed, obviously missing the point, so Bruce tried a more honest approach.

                “Look, when you grow up having to choose between finding food and possibly getting beaten or staying hungry but safe, it takes time to realize some people want to give you good things without ulterior motives. And even then, there’s always that small voice in the back of your head that’s going to try and deny it. To keep you safe.”

                The engineer uncrossed his arms and frowned.

                “So… what you’re saying is, I should stop trying to do anything for Clint.”

                “No, not necessarily, look… Tony, I didn’t come here because of your shiny lab offer. I came here because,” he hedged, not used to sharing such personal thoughts, “because of you… believing in me, giving me space. Not what you could do for me with your wealth. Your respect won me over, Tony.

                “Maybe” Bruce emphasized with a raised brow, “Clint didn’t show up here for the shiny new toys either.”

                Tony stared at him for a few minutes, making Bruce squirm before turning back to the arrows in his hands. Bruce let out a sigh of relief at the loss of focused attention, and instead watched from the corner of his eye as Tony sat like that for a good twenty minutes, giving Bruce’s statement serious thought. He heard  Tony hum, having gone back to his own studies, and looked up to see him tapping different holographic screens and nodding to himself. When he closed them out he had a smile of satisfaction and picked up the prototype arrows he’d been grumbling over what seemed like seconds ago.

 

                “Alright, good talk, Brucie! Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got something for our flightless bird that requires hand delivery. Explosives, you know?” He shrugged with a wink and left Bruce alone, utterly confused by the outcome.

                Bruce didn't want to pry, but when Tony had been gone for over ten minutes he asked Jarvis what he’d just done.  The answer made him smile, and he thought maybe something got through to Tony’s brain after all.

                If Clint found out about the large donation Tony made to the orphanages and domestic abuse shelters  around the state, he didn’t say anything, but Bruce thought he knew. After that he was still hesitant about Tony’s suggested upgrades, but tested prototypes and gave feedback nonetheless. After a bit, he started giving Tony plans, getting almost impatient when they weren’t turned out as fast as usual.

                He knew things had changed when Clint called Tony ‘fam’ the other day when thanking him for a set of arrows with hidden note compartments. Bruce assumed it must be from an inside joke, Clint referring to Tony as family, but the idea still worried him as much as it warmed him. Because Bruce didn’t know how to be part of a family, much less a home.

                And it seemed he had been here for too long because Bruce was starting to feel like the tower might be home. Which was why, when that pesky little thought whispering at him to remove himself from the equation had popped up unannounced, it had scared the shit out of him. The insidious thought that if he was a pathogen, they’d be right to get rid of him.

                The compulsion to run was strong.. Followed by guilt for considering abandoning the others, and now Bruce was stuck in what he considered no-man’s land. He wanted to get away, only, he couldn’t bring himself to leave.     

                 Sometimes he missed Kolkata and everything he had established for himself there, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like living at the tower. Everyone on the team was nice to him, only sometimes bordering on overly nice to avoid his other half’s confrontational side, but that was understandable. It felt like home, and that was the root of his anxiety.

                Nearly every ‘home’ Bruce had in his life, was destroyed or taken from him eventually. Everyone he loved had either left him or he had pushed them away, and Bruce was worried the same thing would happen with the Avengers.

                And he really didn’t want that to happen here.

                The issue was, the more Bruce thought about it, the more convinced he became it wasn’t a matter of if it would happen, but when. Because it always happened. And maybe that was a self-fulfilling pessimistic view, but he couldn’t argue with the statistics.

                Somewhere along the line, things were sure to turn sour. As much as the others tolerated him or maybe even “cared” about him, they would eventually see his true self, the one the Hulk had given form to, and run.

                The worst part was, he wouldn’t blame them when they did.

                Hell, he had tried to run from himself too. At the time killing himself had been the final option. He had reached that point, tasted metal in his mouth, his heart pounding, but that option had been taken from him as well. It was clear the big guy wasn’t going to let him go anytime soon.     

                Now, his only option was to create as little damage as possible, and hope they’d meet some force even the Hulk couldn’t win against.

                Bruce ran his hands through his hair and looked down. Even though it was true, he felt instant regret at acknowledging it. How much of a selfish monster could he be? He punched his arm hard, and knew it would leave a bruise if he were normal. As it was, the skin turned a dark hue for all of two seconds before fading back to its natural color. He felt the stirring irritation from the beast inside him, more agitated than annoyed at his feeble human emotions.

                He punched his arm again.

                He and the other guy both knew Bruce couldn’t do anything to really hurt himself.

                The last thought he had while his skin stretched and broke over swelling muscles, was that he deserved this. He deserved the pain, the torment, and the inability to call anywhere home. Because that’s what monsters deserved, and Bruce Banner was definitely the worst kind of monster.

 

                When Bruce woke up, he was sore. That was nothing new, all things considered. He had once tried to calculate precisely how much mass he gained and lost in the short time of each transformation, but had to give up. He didn’t need the results to tell him it was a lot. He felt it after every episode.

                Groaning, he opened his eyes and looked for a clock in the room. The lights that were always kept at daylight level brightness were blinding and he had to close his eyelids with a quick, painful snap. When he had acclimated enough for the lights not to sear his retinas, he sat up and looked around to survey his surroundings.

                It was about as messy as it usually was, with the things not made of reinforced material scattered across the room in bits. Not for the first time, Bruce was thankful the walls were Hulk-resistant. Granted, Bruce couldn’t see the fine details, his spare glasses lost to the transformation, but he saw enough of the big picture to get the gist of it.

                Paying no attention to the broken pieces that dug into him when he rolled into a crouching position, he slowly got up to his feet, stopping when he started to sway. Placing a hand on the wall in front of him, he cleared his throat and shook his head out. The world was still spinning slightly, but was beginning to come into focus.

                “Jarvis, can I get the date and time?” He cringed at how rough his voice sounded and tried clearing the coarseness out of it.

                “It has been exactly six hours and 32 minutes since you entered the room, Doctor Banner. As such, it is now Tuesday the 12th, 1:04 AM.”

                Bruce thanked Jarvis and yawned. The Other Guy must have had a heck of a time then, if he’d only been out a few hours and Bruce felt this tired. He stifled another yawn and wondered if gravity was getting stronger or if he just needed a few solid hours of sleep. Maybe a bit of both.

                Pressing a button on the side of the keypad controlling  the sealed door, a hoodie and a second set of sweats and spare glasses slid out from the wall. Bruce was grateful for the endless amount of clothing stashed into the wall. Like a clothing vending machine, Tony had told him once, his eyes shining in his crazy way.

                Getting dressed woke his mind up more, but reinforced how sore and tired he was. Every time he blinked, it felt harder and harder to reopen his eyes. Sheer force of will kept them open now as he focused on his way back to the unreinforced world, determined to distance himself as much as possible from the Green Room.

                The first thing he saw was Tony sitting outside the room on a second chair he must have dragged over from a closet somewhere in the gym. He wasn’t staring at Bruce, rather his eyes were locked on the two mugs in his hands.

                Combing his curls back with his fingers, mostly to make sure there were no shards of anything sharp, Bruce sighed heavily before entering  his code into the door lock to be released. Tony looked up briefly when he heard the locks open, then looked down again when Bruce approached him. He stayed silent as Bruce rocked on his feet until the silence was too much even for the man who spent so much time alone.

                “Need something?” Bruce asked warily.

                “You took too long.”

                Bruce half-smiled at the prompt response and shook his head fondly.

                 “You’re just impatient.” There was another small silence before Tony hummed.

                 “Well, be that as it may… you still took too long, by anyone’s standards. Jarvis can back me up on this.”

                 Bruce was about to retort, but a residual wave of pain washed through his frame and he had to sit down. When it ran its course, he begrudgingly lifted his head to look over and see Tony’s face scrunched with concern.

                 Tony wasn’t looking directly at Bruce, which was probably for the best, but even so, Bruce could see his eyes and knew Tony was ruminating on something big.

                 Bruce sighed, waiting for the ‘you are too much’, and ‘maybe you should look for a new address’ speech, but it never came. As the quiet dragged on, Tony eventually handed Bruce one of the cups he held while taking a drink from his own.

                 “Do you want to talk about it? Clearly I’ll understand if you don’t, what with my own shit, but if you do..”

                 Tony let the sentiment hang, his mug raised to his lips as he sipped his drink. Bruce nodded and sampled from his own cup.

                 Blueberry tea. He looked over at Tony with surprise, but the other was still staring straight ahead. Bruce wasn't sure if the warmth spreading through him was purely from the temperature of the tea, or the caring gesture behind it.

                 “Maybe. Not today, but maybe.”

                 Tony nodded before standing up, waiting for Bruce to join him, and slinging an arm around his friend.

                 “Well, in that case, won’t you join me in the lab? I know you’re gonna crash or whatever from all of… that, but I need your special eyes to look over some equations first.”

                 Bruce turned his head even though he knew the brown puppy dog eyes would be waiting and sighed with a smile.

                 “Special eyes, huh?”

                 “Well, they’ve gotta be with how bad your prescriptions are.. I’m just saying!”

                 Bruce let himself chuckle and shook his head.

                “Only you, Stark, would insult someone with known anger issues.”


End file.
